Content 18 - MickMel

Make sure there is content in your content marketing

October 7, 2021 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

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Content marketing can be a great thing. If you consistently produce excellent content, it’s a great way to gain more exposure with search engines and build more trust and credibility with potential clients.

Too often, though, I see companies forget the “content” part of content marketing. In these cases, it’s generally when a company produces regular content, but it’s all about their company and their products. It’s certainly wise to publish some content about who you are and what you do, but that’s different than generating effective content marketing.

The Oxford Dictionary defines content marketing this way:

Content marketing is a type of marketing that involves the creation and sharing of online material (such as videos, blogs, and social media posts) that does not explicitly promote a brand but is intended to stimulate interest in its products or services.

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I would differ a bit from the Oxford definition and say that your content needs to do more than stimulate interest (though that’s a good first step), and actually provide some value. There are lots of ways to create content that stimulates interest, but if there isn’t any value at the end of it, the user will move on to the next site.

Generate high-quality content that provides great value to your users, and they’ll remember you when the time comes.

Don’t overthink SEO

September 28, 2021 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

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There is a tendency to think that ranking well in Google is a big, mysterious, complex thing. It’s really not. I said years ago that Google doesn’t change the rules for SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and that still holds true. Things change frequently, for sure, but most of those are just Google getting better at understanding content and clearing out spam.

At the end of the day, there are just three things you need to do to get 90% of the benefits of Google:

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Produce great content.
Don’t do anything stupid with your site (slow load times, get hacked, etc).
Get others to reference your content, ideally with links.

That’s it. Those aren’t necessarily easy to do, but if you conquer those you’re all set.

Now here is a partial list of what you need to worry about to get the last 10%:

Have great alt text on your images
Use H1 tags for your titles
Customize your meta descriptions
Set up Google Search Console
Set up Bing Webmaster Tools
Submit your sitemap to Google
Install an SEO plugin
Create a robots.txt file
Check canonical tags
Add structured data / schema markup
Organize topic clusters
Optimize for Google AMP
Set up goals in Google Analytics
Disavow bad links to your site
Add great tags
Use solid categories
Add social sharing icons
Make your content a specific length
Link out to other high-quality sources

The list could go on and on. Don’t get me wrong — those are all good things to do! If time allows, every one of those items can be helpful. I just see people get hung up on them far too often and make content generation a giant chore that scares them away.

Goals Matter

Your goals will impact how your posts are shaped. If we’re doing heavy SEO optimization for a client, we’ll do everything on that list to get the absolute most we can out of every piece of content.

For most folks, though, just producing great content on a solid site would be a massive win. I have a friend that is constantly struggling to attract clients, but he’s written zero blog posts in 2021 (and very few in past years). He’s trying to come up with the perfect post and instead he hasn’t published anything. You don’t need to go nuts trying to blog every day, but consistent content wins. Don’t overthink it.

Don’t face the blank page

September 23, 2021 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

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I’ve published a blog post for over 300 days in a row now, but I’ve got to admit something; sitting in front of a blank page is a killer for me. If the page is blank, so is my mind. The solution is pretty easy, though — I don’t sit in front of a blank page.

When it’s time for me to sit down and write, I always have a list of ideas to work from. As I mentioned back in May, I try to capture every single idea that I have. They all go into my note system, so when I sit down and write I generally have a dozen or so potential topics to choose from. Most of the items that go onto that list eventually become posts on this blog, but there are certainly some that I play with a bit and decide it just won’t work.

As of right now, I have nine more solid ideas I can write about, along with another half-dozen half-baked ideas that I need to work through and see if they’re any good. As an example, if you read my post “You don’t need to build your own server” a few days ago, this is the note that it started from:

The final post ended up quite a bit longer than the note, of course, and even went in a slightly different direction. The key was that I had a list of bullet points and ideas to get me started, so when it was time to write I could just dive in.

When I have a potential idea for a blog post, I try to at least get a few of my thoughts down so that future me will remember why I thought it was a good idea.

Many people suffer with the curse of the blank page, including me, so just do what you can to never have to face it again.

Reading carefully is the new listening, and writing clearly is the new empathy

September 22, 2021 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

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Despite the tremendous growth of Zoom and other video conferencing platforms over the last few years, the vast majority of our communication remains in text form, primarily email.

There are big advantages to both types of communication, which Seth Godin broke down right near the beginning of the pandemic.

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Real-time communication, like Zoom or in-person meetings, tends to offer greater clarity. Being face-to-face helps with tone and intention, and can greatly speed up the chase to a resolution.

Asynchronous communication, like email, gives two different advantages; time and recollection. Because it’s not real-time, you can have a text-based communication with a group of people and not have to worry about syncing up your schedules. Also, while you can always record a Zoom meeting if you want, the text-based record of email is much easier to search through in the future to find out what was said.

Email overload

Because we all tend to get a ton of emails each day, a typical way of handling that is to hustle through our responses. I’ve certainly been guilty of this, as I continue to try to break my habit of quick emails like “thoughts?” and give more detailed expectations.

Erica Dhawan explains in her book “Digital Body Language“, that email and other text-based communications require a bit more from both parties, and she says:

Reading carefully is the new listening, and writing clearly is the new empathy

Reading carefully seems fairly obvious (though we all fall short at times), but it’s the second part of that statement that really got my attention. I’ve talked quite a bit about empathy on this blog over the past few years, but I hadn’t considered it from this perspective.

Empathy is considered “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another”, and keeping that in mind when writing emails can do a lot to help the other party understand what you’re trying to convey. Part of that is treating people with respect and giving full responses, but the other part is understanding where they are and being respectful of that.

For example, if a client wants to make an update on their website, I might email them and say “To get started, click here to log into WordPress, and then choose “Posts” on the left side of the page, then click on the post you want to edit, then change the text, and then click the “Update” button in the upper right corner.“

However, if I’m asking our developer to make the same kind of change on a site, almost all of that text would be superfluous and would waste her time. That’s not to say I should be terse, but that I should carefully think through the state of the person I’m emailing and give proper context to them.

Empathy can serve you well in many areas of life, and email is one of them. Erica wrote a great post about this that you can read here, or check out her book if you really want to go deep.

Sharing the posts I write

September 13, 2021 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

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Since I’ve started blogging regularly again, the way I share my posts each day has been slightly adjusted a number of times. I recently was asked for some details on that, so here you go.

Before I tackle that, though, there are two important things to frame this with. First, you need to understand why I’m writing every day, as that impacts how I choose to share these posts. In short, these posts are primarily for me, and I’m not looking to necessarily force people back to my website to get “better numbers”. Read them wherever is easiest for you, and I hope you find some value from them..

Secondly, I’ve shared a bit about my process of collecting ideas and turning them from ideas to posts, which you can read here. Today’s post is a continuation of that, sharing what happens when I press “publish”.

Publish on WordPress

The first part is pretty easy — I press the “publish” button on my WordPress blog. There are ways to schedule posts to publish automatically, but I prefer to give each post one final read through to hopefully have it error-free.

You can automate much of the sharing from there, but I do most of it manually. I figure if I’m going to put a lot of work into each post, I can spend a couple of minutes sharing them.

Import on Medium

Next I import the full post onto my Medium site. I use the “import” rather than just copy/paste, as it offers a few benefits for search engine optimization if you do it that way. This brings over a full copy of my post so if people choose to simply follow me there, they can.

Share on Substack

Next I share and publish on my Substack site. This is similar to Medium, but is really how most of my email subscribers get my posts. Substack is great for that! This post from a few months ago talks about why I use Substack.

Share on social media

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Lastly, I share the post on a variety of social media channels including my Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter accounts. There are ways to automate this, but I do these manually as well, for two reasons:

I don’t share every post to every network. Some of the geekier posts I leave off of Facebook, and some of the more personal ones I leave off of LinkedIn. 90% of my posts end up on all of them, but I pick-and-choose at times.
I customize the text I use to share each post, depending on the content and the audience.

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Those social posts always link back to my main site, not to Medium or Substack, as that’s ideally where most people will follow me. Ultimately, though, it doesn’t really matter.

Five minutes

While that feels like a good bit of work, most days I can get it all done in about five minutes. I have a folder of bookmarks for the sites to share, so I just open them up, publish the content for each one, and move on with my day.

Wherever you’re reading this, I hope you picked up a new idea or two!

Three simple rules for sharing

September 8, 2021 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

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Social media is often filled with memes and information that are just flat-out incorrect. Most of it comes from one type of sharing: “That fits my viewpoint, so I’ll pass it along!“. Truth becomes secondary to speed.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t share things that you agree with, but taking a moment to verify that accuracy of them can be helpful. Manu Moreale has three rules for sharing anything, and I think they’re a good place for most people to start.

1. Read or watch the entire thing before sharing it

I’ve seen this a few times, where someone will leave a comment on an article that they clearly didn’t take the time to read. NPR used that to their advantage a few years ago with a brilliant prank that got people to leave lots of comments about an article that didn’t even exist.

Another good example was a Facebook post I published earlier this year; the first response from “Bill” was very passionate, but confusing, and he admitted to just looking at the title and going for it.

Twitter has even done experiments to try to force users to read a story before passing it along, though with rather disappointing results.

2. Wait at least a minute after I’m done consuming content before sharing it

Manu’s next thought is perhaps a little more difficult. Just pause for a minute, take a breath, and then decide if you should share it or not. This is along the lines of my “Take a minute” post from last year, but Manu’s thought is more about just taking a minute for yourself to process and decide, which can be very beneficial.

3. Ask myself if this is something I’d like to receive

This last rule gets even trickier, and I think most people already follow it… sort of.

If someone shares a post that is wildly offensive, it still might pass muster because the person sharing it would certainly be happy to receive it as well (and they likely just did, which led to them sharing it). I think Manu’s point goes a bit toward empathy, and thinking if what you share would be of value to your larger network. That’s not to say everyone should agree with it (disagreements can be a good thing), but being civil is something we should all aspire to and avoiding dehumanizing words and concepts is a good step toward that.

Whether you want to follow those rules is obviously completely up to you. Manu does, I’ve done roughly the same thing myself (and appreciate his clarity with these rules), and they’re good things to consider the next time you find that great piece that you think is worth sharing.

Procrastination can be productive

September 5, 2021 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

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Productivity and procrastination are often direct opposites, but they can sometimes go hand-in-hand. This isn’t to say you should be slow on purpose, but sometimes letting your mind wander can help you unpack big problems.

That’s true for me on this blog. Some posts are written immediately after I have the idea, and then are published a few days later. Other times, I have an idea but I can’t quite work it all out, so I let it sit for weeks (or sometimes months) as I try to sort out my thoughts on it.

There’s a humorous example of this from “The Big Bang Theory” a few years ago. Sheldon is stumped on a major problem, so he gets a “mind numbing, pedestrian job” (his words) to let his mind wander and subconsciously work on the problem. Here’s a clip of that:

It can be hard to intentionally let your mind wander, and getting a job as a busboy at the Cheesecake Factory just for that purpose seems a bit much, but there are some ways you can do it.

First, just let it linger. In the case of some of these blog posts I simply add them to my list and revisit them every few days, and at some point they tend to click.

Second, force some blank space in your life. I take clarity breaks when I’m able, but going for a walk without any music/podcast in your ears will force your brain to wander a bit. It won’t be productive every time, but you’ll likely gain great insights on some of those walks.

Do you do anything to try to force some down time for your brain?

Why most blogs should allow comments

August 31, 2021 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

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Over the past decade, I’ve seen more and more blogs get rid of their comment section and simply say something like “go discuss it on Facebook”. I think that’s a bad move, at least in most cases.

At a high level, it’s because I still think we need to take back our content. Taking back your posts is a great start, but things fall a bit short if you continue to let social media handle the ongoing discussion. While people will ideally be sharing your thoughts on social no matter what, you should encourage the primary conversation to happen on your site.

While this blog doesn’t see a lot of comments (a total of 879 of them over the years), all of them have added to the conversation and a few of them have been quite interesting. Two quick examples were Dennis Crowley chiming in on my post about Foursquare in 2009, and Peter Shankman offering me a correction and more details about his thoughts on the “go ahead, pick my brain” post from a few years back. If I had just offloaded those comments to social media, they’d be impossible to find at this point. Instead, they add great information to both of those posts, even years later.

When it comes to allowing comments on a blog, the conversation is a bit different depending on what kind of blog you run, and I think blogs can be sorted into three rough categories:

Very popular or business blogs
Semi-celebrity blogs
Personal blogs

Very popular blogs

If you run a very popular blog, or one for your business, comments can be a tricky thing. A good example is a company like Anna Griffin, who see dozens of comments on every post, and often hundreds on a post (like this one). This requires someone dedicated to managing those comments and keeping the discussion on track. It’s hugely valuable, but it’s also a lot of work.

If you fall into this category, I can argue either side of this. I think you generally should allow comments and then work to keep the conversation solid, as it’s a tremendous way to build a community (like Anna Griffin has done), but it can be tough to keep things on track.

Semi-celebrity blogs

This is the group that I think struggles the most with comments. When I say “semi-celebrity”, I’m thinking of bloggers that are essentially going it alone, but have a big following. A good example is Chris Lema, a fantastic blogger with a huge following, and someone that doesn’t allow comments. He wrote in 2013 about why he had them, but wrote earlier this year about why he turned them off.

As much as I’m a fan of comments, I’d likely do the same thing if I was in his shoes. If I suddenly had dozens of comments on every post, I’d either need to devote significant time or money to address them. There is value in those comments, for sure, but probably not enough to justify the expense.

In his reasons for turning off comments, though, his third one is this:

The third reason is because the community went other places. As social media grew in dominance, and blogs started taking a smaller role in online conversations and community, I noticed that more discussions were happening on Twitter (at least for me) than on my own blog.

He’s not wrong, but I’m still going to try to fight that trend. Social media is continuing to slowly fragment, so it can be hard to find “the” conversation from a particular post. Chris is mostly on Twitter, the majority of folks are on Facebook, I tend to enjoy LinkedIn conversations, and then there is the whole new crop of networks always coming up. There is one place you could put a discussion where everyone can see it, and that’s at the bottom of the post. Again, though, folks like Chris are in a tough spot in the middle and I can understand why his comments are off.

Personal blog

This post isn’t about folks like Chris, though — it’s about the 99% of us that don’t have that “problem” of too many comments. If you have a blog (and you absolutely should), you should strongly consider having comments enabled. If you use a solid anti-spam tool like Akismet, the upkeep is very minimal. I want to give people a chance to share their responses on here, as their insights on my posts can make the posts better than my initial thoughts ever could.

For example, people had some good thoughts on cord-cutting options, questions about Roam Research, and tools for keeping up with contacts. None were super long discussions, but all help to add more context when people visit those posts in the future.

There’s no perfect answer for everyone, and there are some great reasons why you should disable comments on your site. For most of us, most of the time, leaving comments enabled will help make the web a bit of a better place.

What do you think? Leave a comment and let us know. 🙂